Nobel laureate VS Naipaul dies

Nobel prize-winning British author VS Naipaul has died at the age of 85, his family announced on Saturday.

“He died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavour,” his wife Lady Naipaul said in a statement. She described him as a “giant in all that he achieved”.

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul wrote more than 30 books and won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2001.

Born in Trinidad, the son of an Indian civil servant, he studied English literature at Oxford University before basing his life in England. But he spent much of his time travelling and became a symbol of modern rootlessness. Awarding him the Nobel, the Swedish Academy said he was a “literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice”.